SenSys 2007 Business Meeting: SenSys 2007 Business Meeting John Heidemann SenSys steering committee chair 8 November 2007


Why a Business Meeting?: Why a Business Meeting? what makes Sensys? the community: submitting papers the community: volunteering effort we need to foster our community solicit the best papers recruit new volunteers evolve (and grow) the focus as necessary meeting goals let you know what has been going on solicit your feedback and future involvement


Agenda: Agenda SenSys background steering committee agenda fostering the best conference selecting locations and chairs discussion so we have the same start what the SC has been doing some questions from SC and open discussion


SenSys Goal:the place for sensornet systems work: SenSys Goal: the place for sensornet systems work some papers to other top venues (ASPLOS, SOSP, SIGCOMM, Mobicom, etc.) some material may push boundaries e.g., good systems work that is more sensors than networks, or vice versa or good sensornet work that isn’t core systems work (maybe theory or analysis or...) but we strive to be the best place for mature, general sensornet research


What is Sensor Networking?: What is Sensor Networking? traditionally: small, intelligent, communicating, distributed devices in the physical world often resource constrained, autonomous, wireless not always all of these, but usually some but it must evolve otherwise the field will ossify example traditional sensornets: car-based sensornets (not resource constrained), mobile phones (not autonomous), RFID (not very smart), etc. exact definition is up to PC, but the SC encourages a broad view something that matters applications that users care about cross-disciplinary integration


Sensys in the Conference Space: Sensys in the Conference Space Sensys: core systems sensornet work IPSN: intelligence and signal processing side Hot-EmNets: early work (for early work) many, many other conferences filling in other parts of the sensornet space general: SECON, MASS, DCOSS, ICESS, ... specialized: EWSN, WSNS, WUWnet, ... and related conferences publishing relevant work! (ASPLOS, SIGCOMM, MOBICOM, INFOCOM, etc.)


Sensys as a Thing: Sensys as a Thing Sensys is “just” a conference not a SIG, but affiliated with SIGCOMM, SIGMOBILE, SIGOPS implications: every conference needs to break even no long-term budget (unlike SIGs) and we need to think about where we fit in


the Sensys Steering Committee: the Sensys Steering Committee purpose: foster Sensys who: last three years of general and program chairs reps from the two largest sponsoring ACM SIGs SIGMOBILE: Chiara Petrioli SIGCOMM: Craig Partridge what: decides general chair, PC chairs and conference location, with input of general chair talks about stuff 2003: (retired) Ian Akyildiz, Deborah Estrin, David Culler, Mani Srivastava 2004: (retiring) John Stankovic, Anish Arora, Ramesh Govindan 2005: Feng Zhao, Hari Balakrishnan Jason Redi 2006: Andrew Campbell, Philippe Bonnet, John Heidemann 2007: (joining) Sanjay Jha, Phillip Gibbons, Akos Ledeczi A huge thanks to the founding and retired SC members!


the Sensys Program Committee: the Sensys Program Committee purpose: evaluate a year’s papers selected by the PC chairs typically selected for breadth (in research area, geography, academia/industry) challenge: covering the multi-disciplinary space adequately dedicated personally reviewing ~20 papers (with detailed, constructive feedback) helping find external reviewers for ~5 others attending a 1 day, face-to-face PC meeting shepherding ~1 conditionally accepted paper


Agenda: Agenda SenSys background steering committee agenda fostering the best conference selecting locations and chairs discussion


Fostering the Best Conference: Fostering the Best Conference getting top papers strong demo track demo research work may grow into industrial trade show (track) => awards to feature academic and industrial demos strong technical presentations full and involved talks => single track => best talk award bring in new ideas => co-located workshops (most of this done by SC before 2006)


Conference Continuity: Conference Continuity common website: http://sensys.acm.org thanks to Mark Hansen (2006 web chair) for starting site prior web chairs for getting me their old sites business meetings for face-to-face discussion sensornet-specific mailing list? sensys-announce? purpose: low-bandwidth announcements about conferences, job openings, etc. I can host at ISI (if desired), but it should be moderated => any takers? (new this year)


Sensys Paper Health: Sensys Paper Health submit rate seems consistent (in spite of more confs) (there are many opinions on what accept rate is “ideal”, but...) accept rate seems consistent with prior Sensyses, and with comparable conferences


Selecting Location: Selecting Location goal: broad global involvement North America, Europe, and Asia (and relatively easy to get to) tension: fostering new involvement vs. where work is now ease and cost of travel (vs. availability of travel support) current long-term rotation: North America east coast, NA west coast, Europe/Asia


Sensys Attendance: Sensys Attendance solid line: unique individuals dots: event attendance


Selecting Chairs: Selecting Chairs goals get a broad representation geographic (North America, Europe, Asia) traditional discipline (hardware, networking, algorithms, information processing) academia and industry grow leaders from within general and PC chairs select other exec and PC committee members => if you’re interested, talk to next year’s chairs


Sensys 2008: Sensys 2008 North Carolina, US (east coast) general chair: Tarek Abdelzahar (UIUC) PC chairs: Margaret Martonosi (Princeton), Adam Wolisz (TU Berlin) steering committee chair: Andrew Campbell (Dartmouth) participation: hopefully you!


Program Committee Diversity: Program Committee Diversity Inspiration: “On the Caching and Prefetching of Program Committees”, Stefan Savage, SIGCOMM 1999 outrageous opinions more PC members to cope with more papers balance of turnover and continuity each year


Program Committee Diversity: Program Committee Diversity but there’s growing recidivism ...what’s the trend? ...what’s an upper-bound?


Agenda: Agenda SenSys background steering committee agenda fostering the best conference selecting locations and chairs discussion SC questions for you open discussion (green text is from discussion, => indicates conclusions)


Quick Questions: Quick Questions volunteers for mailing list moderator? (running mailman at ISI, or your software at your site) Phil Levis new topics? consider proposing a workshop for 2008 should keep workshops workshopish (shorter papers) => interest in another Doctoral Coll. (pending financial support [NSF edu support] and panelists?) demo session...should it include pay-to-demo industry exhibits (a la SC or SIGGRAPH)? not clear industry is ready at this time, but each year general chair and SC should re-evaluate


Conference Location: Conference Location the SC wants to plan location 2 years out location rotation (NA east coast, NA west coast, non-US) alternative examples SIGCOMM is US, Europe, wildcard (plus local conferences: SIGCOMM-Asia, etc.) HotEmNets was US, non-US OSDI: US only SOSP: US, US, non-US (complementing EuroSys) ISPN: US only Ubicomp: US, EU, US, Asia discussion? EWSN makes every 3rd reasonable? try every 3rd for a while before varying coordinate location of ISPN TinyOS downloads are 40% US lots of activity in Asia (Japan, China, etc.) => strong consensus on 3rd year for now (esp. given EWSN)


Specific Venues: Specific Venues (for 2009 or 2010, ...) need city / local chair Zurich / Jan Beutel Bay Area / David Culler q about urban vs. outside (Napa, Carmel, Davis, etc.) Seattle / Feng Zhao, Stewart Tansley post discussion: 2010: Tokyo / Yoshito Tobe background: prior policy was always near airport => consensus that we will consider relaxing this requirement if not near airport, conference local arrangements needs to identify transportation options


Open Discussion: Open Discussion thoughts about many conferences? suggestions to improve Sensys? folks would like talk slides on common web page (=> consensus: yes) pre-prints on web page? some people don’t care about the paper copy, but many do some people want PDF before conf, but many don’t care role of theory papers in Sensys PC needs (and has had 2 or more theory people) ISPN caries the theory burden? (some unsucessful discussion about wording the role of theory at sensys) q: distinguish ISPN vs. Sensys or should Sensys cover all? => strong consensus that we should highlight different conference focuses role of (ISPN-like) implementation contests? role of early info about long-lived implementation/deployments?


Post-Discussion: Post-Discussion from community: request for paper list of attendees in conference materials